In photolithography in a manufacturing process of a semiconductor device, a resist film is formed by coating a resist on a surface of a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter, simply referred to as “wafer”) used as a substrate, and a resist pattern is formed by performing a developing processing after the resist film is exposed to light. A coating and developing apparatus configured to perform the formation of the resist film and the developing processing may be equipped with an inspection module for inspecting a surface state of the wafer before or after the individual processings in the coating and developing apparatus are performed.
If, however, this inspection module is provided, a space for accommodating modules configured to process the wafer may be reduced. That is, for the reason of space limit, it may be difficult to provide or additionally provide the inspection module within the coating and developing apparatus. Further, in order to perform the inspection with high accuracy, maintenance of the inspection module may be regularly performed, for example. Thus, the inspection module may need to be provided in such a way to allow this maintenance to be performed easily. Thus, there is a demand for a technique capable of providing the inspection module within the apparatus while meeting all of the aforementioned requirements.
Patent Document 1 describes a coating and developing apparatus equipped with a carrier block having a load port on which a carrier accommodating wafers therein is placed; a processing block having a multiple number of processing modules configured to process the wafers; and an interface module configured to connect the processing block and an exposure apparatus. An inspection module is horizontally arranged with respect to the carrier block. According to this apparatus configuration, however, a footprint of the apparatus is increased due to the presence of the inspection module. Moreover, since a transfer device for the wafer provided in the carrier block transfers the wafers to both the processing block and the inspection module, a load of the transfer device may be larger, which may result in deterioration of a throughput of the apparatus. Thus, it is also required to suppress the deterioration of the throughput of the apparatus and the increase of the footprint of the apparatus which might be caused by providing the inspection module.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2003-151878